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Artist: Theo Croker & Sullivan Fortner
Album: Play
Genre: Free Improvisation
Label: ACT Music
Released: 2025
Quality: FLAC (tracks+.cue)
Tracklist:
01. A Prayer for Peace (2:55)
02. First Light (3:03)
03. We Laugh Because We Must (2:01)
04. Midnight Bloom (1:25)
05. The Space Within (2:05)
06. Let the Quiet Speak (1:58)
07. Open Palms (3:43)
08. Light Remains (5:54)
09. Beneath the Noise (3:19)
10. Mouth Full of Sky (3:25)
11. Grace Is Not Gentle (1:56)
12. As We Are (5:10)
13. Then We Danced (3:48)
14. Here and Now (2:51)
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Trumpeter Theo Croker and pianist Sullivan Fortner conjure a communal reverie on 2025's Play. Friends and collaborators since meeting while students at Oberlin Conservatory, Croker and Fortner spent the early 2000s pushing each other to excel. It was during this period that they recorded Croker's first two albums, 2006's The Fundamentals and 2009's In the Tradition. Following Croker's return from an extended period working in China, they again came together for the trumpeter's 2014 breakthrough, Afro Physicist, an album that found him expanding into fusion, funk, and global traditions. Though they stayed close, they moved in different directions, with Croker continuing to expand his cross-pollinated sound and Fortner building a reputation as a first-class accompanist and working with singers like Cecile McLorin Salvant, Samara Joy, and Kurt Elling. Play finds Croker and Fortner returning to their roots playing as an acoustic duo in the way they might have done in a college practice room. Yet, rather than working through the changes of a jazz standard or a blues, here they craft atmospherically textured improvised songs; tone poems that display the sophistication and poetic creativity they've accumulated since their school days. Tracks like the opening "A Prayer for Peace," "Open Palms," and the "Let the Quiet Speak" are softly textured ballads marked by Croker's breathy, vocal-like tone and Fortner's subtle chordal harmonies. There are evocative, almost cinematic moments, as in "Midnight Bloom" where they face off over Croker's dagger sharp, Spanish-tinged motif; the trumpeter playing the bright-caped bullfighter to Fortner's grumbling bass-clef bull. Similarly, on "Grace Is Not Gentle," they tumble and leap like modern dancers through a Thelonious Monk-esque landscape of sharp-edged chords and cubist melodies. Throughout all of Play, Croker and Fortner play with a sustained intensity of feeling that speaks to their shared artistry and deep creative connection.
Review by Matt Collar